Guest of Honour: Pan-Pot about their love for Amsterdam party promotion

Mar 11, 2012 | by Chloë Arkenbout | Music

About the author

Born and raised in Amsterdam, lives to dance and dances to live on electronic music, has a small vinyl addiction, appreciates a little sarcasm now and then, thinks musicals are annoying and loves those moments where you lose track of time completely.

Tassilio Ippenberger and Thomas Benedix, the multi-dimensional Berlin DJ duo better known as Pan-Pot, have the exceptional talent of spinning only techno and house tracks that I absolutely love. At the end of March a documentary about them will be released due to their tremendous success. On Saturday the 17th, they will play a 4 hour set at Linke Soep in Studio 80, where their documentary will be displayed as well. I got to meet up with them for a nice chat.

First I wanted to get to know Thomas and Tasillio a little better, so I thought it would be fun to give them a few ultimatums on which they had to agree on with each other. This is what they chose:

Intimate club vs. Massive festival: “Intimate Club.”
Amsterdam vs. Berlin: “Berlin. But only because we know Berlin better.”
Techno vs. House: In unison followed by laughter: “Techno!!!”
Being in the studio vs. Performing/playing: “Performing.”
Food vs. Sex: “Sex.” This was the most difficult question for the guys in the whole interview.
Playing at sunset vs. Playing at sunrise: “Sunset. At sunrise we’re fucked up…”
Indoor festival vs. Outdoor festival: “Outdoor.”
Drugs vs. Alcohol: “Definitely alcohol.”
Money vs. Fame: “Fame.”
Remixing vs. Being remixed: “Remixing.”

How did the story of you getting together as a DJ duo go?
“We took the same audio engineering course in University where we sat next to each other. Most of our classmates were into hip-hop while we shared the love for techno. We also had the same sort of humour and our personalities worked really well together. This is kind of how it all started.”

Because there are two of you, do you ever disagree on stuff?
“Oh yeah, we do. Back in the days we used to have a lot of verbal fights. Now however, our disagreements are part of the creative process and we accept each other’s opinion. If one of us starts with a track and the other might suddenly have inspiration to do something differently or to add something on top of the track, we just let each other. This improves the creative process”

What makes you unique compared to other DJs/producers in the world?
“In general someone’s personality and character makes someone unique. We’re with the two of us. We both have completely different characters so together we’re like a special package. We also don’t just stick to one spectrum of genres. We are big music lovers and love to use different styles.”

You played at the Westergasfabriek and a lot of other venues in Amsterdam, so you know Amsterdam. What’s best about playing in our town?
“The promotion and the organisation of all the parties are amazing. There are so many parties and festivals and they are never empty. We never had any (real) problems with Dutch organisations. But also the people and the crowds! There are so many enthusiastic electronic music lovers here. Everyone here is so friendly and the girls are beautiful.”

You guys have a documentary coming up. Are you happy with the result?
“Yeah, we’re really happy with it, especially given the fact that we were very sceptical at first. The whole documentary wasn’t our idea, and we didn’t feel like being filmed all the time. In the end it turned out really great because it’s not your typical DJ documentary. There are a lot of embarrassing youth pictures of us in there where we wear terrible clothes. This makes the whole DVD entertaining instead of boring which most documentaries tend to be.”

How much were you involved in the process of the documentary?
“Because of our scepticism we didn’t support it that much in the beginning. Later, when we saw some of the editing, we realised it was going to be pretty cool. That’s when we started having some own ideas and input about possible scenes or shots we could shoot.”

Do you feel that the documentary resembles your true colours and did you have to censor scenes at the end because you didn’t like them?
“Yes, it resembles us completely and we didn’t make any changes. The director, Sebastian Radlmeier, is a friend so he had no intention in making us look bad. We trusted him.”

You’re playing at Studio 80 at Linke Soep on the 17th of March. What can we expect?
“We’ll promise you a good party! We love Studio 80 and have a good relationship with all the people working there. There’s always a comfortable vibe. A lot of our friends that live in Amsterdam are coming too, so definitely expect an amazing night!”